Arundel Politics: Voice of the People

Those five words are almost guaranteed to tense up anyone following national news.

President Obama used executive orders last week to stop deportation of up to 5 million immigrants in the country without documentation. Mitch McConnell, the next Senate majority leader, plans to use the new Republican majority in Congress to block him.

It's a sadly familiar theme in an era of divided federal government. Nothing gets done on issues everyone agrees must be addressed. So we all go through yet another political conflagration.

Steven Kull believes he has a better way — the Citizen Cabinet, a scientifically selected sample of constituents who can provide a sort of compass for dithering members of Congress.

Kull is a Senior Research Scholar at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, and is a leader of Voice of the People, a nonprofit group that wants to use technology to let members of Congress know what's on the minds of their constituents.

He argues that a representative sample of average people will find the best solution, giving members of Congress political support needed to ignore vested interests and party leaders who treat progress on policy decisions as a zero-sum game.

"When you're talking about the bulk of the people, it isn't as simple as they want this and they want that as much as it is as most people think in terms of problem-solving and balancing values over choosing one value over another," Kull said during a recent meeting with the Capital Gazette editorial board.

We're about to see if Kull is on to something. Voice of the People is setting up an intricate test of the idea in three states, Maryland as the liberal state, Oklahoma as the conservative and Virginia as the moderate.

A panel of 900 scientifically selected volunteers will regularly get an online briefing on complicated issues before Congress, both pro and con. The details will be developed with advocates and opponents on Capitol Hill.

Participants will then be asked to choose one of several policy options that are actually on the table. Results will then be forwarded to the participants' representatives in Congress, essentially making clear the will of the people. In Maryland, the project will take place in the 7th District, represented by U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Baltimore.

"If you get a representative sample of a dozen citizens around a table, they assume they're going to find consensus and they usually do," Kull said.

The goal is to prove the concept, and win approval from Congress for a national citizen cabinet — 120,000 people divided among congressional districts. Central to this plan is an idea that may or may not be true: Congress would end gridlock if only it knew what constituents wanted. Kull, a pollster, naturally believes more polling is the answer to the problem of gridlock.

I've met all four members of Congress who represent Anne Arundel County, and I don't think any of them is in the dark on what their constituents want. Defining "constituent" is the rub.

U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards gets lots of money from trade unions. She's advocates public infrastructure projects that provide work for union members — who support her at the polls.

U.S. Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger gets lots of money from defense contractors. He oversees work at Fort George G. Meade — home to the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command — and Aberdeen Proving Ground. Ruppersberger supports programs at those bases, and the companies and their many employees support him.

The amount of money flowing in this relationship, combined with partisan redistricting, make it very hard to unseat an incumbent. And they can say they're representing their constituents, or at least the active portion of their constituents, if not some theoretical consensus.

In January, Voice of the People will begin releasing the findings of its Citizen Cabinet. The thing to watch, though, will be whether the results provide guidance for Congress — or affirmation.